Clear Lake competes for NASA facility

NASA plans new service centerClear Lake competing for facility and its 500-700 jobs

MARK CARREAU, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, March 17, 2004

The Clear Lake area is in the hunt for a new NASA service center that could bring with it 500 to 700 jobs.

Business leaders and elected officials met Tuesday to offer a $15 million office building and other incentives to a NASA delegation that will evaluate sites in six states.

The center will consolidate the agency's financial and personnel activities, now distributed among 11 facilities across the country.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe is expected to select the winning site this year, possibly by late June. The space agency is preparing to open the new NASA Shared Services Center as soon as October 2005.

"These are high-paying, high-performance jobs," said Reinhartsen. "This doesn't pollute, and the employees are highly educated."

The partnership, which is spearheading the effort among developers and state and local officeholders, has proposed a 44-acre site on undeveloped Johnson Space Center land, just west of Saturn Lane and north of Space Center Houston.

The proposal includes the sale of industrial revenue bonds to finance the construction of a $15 million, five-story, 133,000-square-foot office complex, enough room for 500 workers. The plan includes provisions for an adjacent annex that could house 200 more.

Under the Clear Lake proposal, NASA would lease the building under a 15-year agreement that includes another four five-year options.

"I've seen the charts. I've seen the floor plans. I see that a lot of time has gone into preparing for the NASA Shared Services Center competition," said Fred Gregory, NASA's deputy administrator and a former astronaut, who led the delegation.

Studies by NASA four years ago revealed the agency could save at least $5 million annually by consolidating a range of financial management and human resources activities carried out at its Washington headquarters and 10 field centers. Those include procurements, financial management, grant applications, payroll processing and personnel training.

Those tasks are carried out by about 300 federal civil servants and 200 contractors under three dozen contract agreements.